he thought, I’m not here to think.
Siobhan had lasagne with garlic bread and Xander had cottage pie. He’d quite fancied a pudding but the innuendo of spotted dick put him off and he wasn’t keen on anything else. The two of them always arrived and left separately, which made the whole thing slightly detached and clinical but part of their dynamic. No banter in the car, no hand on leg, no sudden eye contact, or sensing the other person’s physical presence. Just a quick look, every now and then, in the rear-view mirror to check that they were still together. And, six months on, together they still were in this ever so liberal, coolly casual way.
They parked and then walked together to Xander’s house in separate silence, Siobhan behind while Xander unlocked the door. She could sense detachment in him – a physical detachment which was not what this whole game was about. The emotional detachment, yes – but hitherto that had enhanced the physical side. Tonight, though, something was different. Usually, they’d be all over each other before the door had closed behind them. Though they always made it into the bedroom, it was having romped and humped their way there from the sitting room, up against all the walls en route and usually a bit of doggy-style halfway up the stairs. But tonight, Xander walked ahead, going straight through to his kitchen, keeping his back to Siobhan, filling a pint glass with water and drinking it down in agitated gulps. He hadn’t let the tap run and the water was unpleasantly tepid. Siobhan stood self-consciously on the boundary of the sitting room and the open-plan kitchen, as if unsure of what came next in this change to the script. Was there to be dialogue? A scene change? There were no stage directions and she felt a little stuck. He was still standing there, his back to her. Did she want a glass of water, she asked herself? No, she didn’t think so. At that moment, it struck her how unnatural all of this was and, just then, she didn’t like the way it made her feel.
Still drinking, Xander turned and faced her and they looked at each other silently. He offered her the glass and she stepped forward to take it. She took a dainty sip and then, locking eyes with Xander, she trickled the rest down her neck where it reached her silk top and spread quickly like ink on blotting paper, turning the silvery tone into gunmetal grey and causing the fabric to cling to her body, her nipples to harden and stand proud. Xander knocked the glass out of her hands and onto the floor where it landed on the rug with a muffled thud. He nudged it away, where it rolled off onto the wooden floor and knocked against the skirting board. And then all was silent again and Siobhan had moved up close to Xander, grabbing fistfuls of his shirt as she reached for his mouth with hers. His hands moved across her body, feeling her flesh through the silk, wet or dry. She was rubbing at his groin where his erection was tantalizingly restricted. Falling onto her knees, she unbuckled his belt, hoicked down the zip and pulled sharply on his jeans and his boxers in one fell swoop. He could feel her breath hot above his cock and could sense how agonizingly close her mouth was, trying to stand steady while the sensation of her caressing his balls with one hand and tracing the crack between his buttocks with the other threatened his balance. And then he was between her lips, deeper into the sucking wet cavity of her mouth; it felt as if she was swallowing him whole.
She pulled away and looked up at him beseechingly. ‘Do you want to come in my mouth? Or my cunt?’
He pulled her to her feet and pressed his tongue into her mouth where it met hers. He grabbed at her skirt and delved his hands up her thighs, foraging through her knickers and into the slippery promise behind. And then he thought, she absolutely reeks of garlic. And then he thought, I don’t have any condoms. And then he thought, oh God, I’m losing my hard-on.
‘In your mouth,’ he whispered as they folded down onto the rug, clawed away the remaining clothing and settled head to toe, tonguing and sucking at each other until they were sated.
Don’t stay the night. Not this time.
‘I’m exhausted,’ Siobhan said. And she headed off to Xander’s bedroom before he could suggest otherwise.
He looked around the sitting room. Strewn clothes. A severely rucked rug. A discarded glass on the floor with a crack now visible. A woman’s shoes – one here, one there. His shirt, in a scrunch and flung onto the kitchen like a wiping-round rag. What had seemed such a good idea had left him with an odd taste in his mouth – akin to feeling nauseous but unable to pinpoint the offending food. Pulling his boxers back up from his ankles, he went to sit in his leather tub chair, taking the phone from his jeans pocket. Two texts. Both from Caroline.
So … you dark horse. Dish the dirt – who is she?
She’d sent another, about ten minutes ago.
Want to come to dinner Fri? With your lady friend?
How to reply? His closest friends – who’d always supported him, who wanted only the best for him and who’d been there for him when his relationship with Laura came to grief. Xander knew, quite categorically, that he didn’t want them to be part of this – this thing – with Siobhan. And that in itself made this thing with Siobhan not quite right.
Chapter Ten
Stella arrived back at Longbridge Hall at two minutes before eleven o’clock and sat in her car listening to the radio for the pips on the hour. She imagined that, for people like the Fortescues, it was considered as impudent to turn up early as it was decreed discourteous to turn up late. She rang the bell and gave a lively knock at precisely eleven o’clock.
‘You’re back?’ Mrs Biggins said, as if Stella might not be of sound mind.
‘I’m expected,’ said Stella, taking off her coat and giving it to Mrs Biggins.
‘One moment,’ Mrs Biggins said and Stella thought she could detect a glint of approval.
When Lydia appeared, Stella felt grateful for Paul Smith and high heels because she both looked and felt taller and more imposing than she had the day before and it was obvious that Lady Lydia had noticed. The woman bristled slightly, tipped her chin upwards as if competing for height. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘As you asked – eleven o’clock prompt.’ And then Stella saw a flicker of confusion scuttle across Lydia’s face and settle as dull discomfort behind her eyes. She softened her tone. ‘To see the grounds?’ Stella prompted in her more usual voice, ‘And art?’
Lydia gathered herself. ‘I’ll take you.’
However, the art wasn’t Beckinsford or any other painter remotely connected with Reynolds, nor was it portraits or landscapes or equine backsides. The Art Lydia took Stella to see was short for Arthur, a wizened old man little younger than Lady Lydia. He lived in an apartment in a wing of the stable courtyard which was some way from the main house and cordoned from view by the mighty wall of the kitchen garden. Made from the same rosy-hued bricks as the main house, the buildings ran three sides of a square, with a central archway crowned by a clock tower. The clock face itself was greening, the hands fixed at ten past three as if it had been dredged up from the pond where it had lain for some time and fish had feasted upon a great many of the numbers. The wing to the right had been converted into two dwellings. To the left, above what must have been the coach bays, appeared to be another apartment – Stella noted curtains at the windows but the glass was so dusty she was sure it was derelict.
Lydia rapped on the door. ‘He’s as deaf as a post,’ she said, with the same exasperation she extended to Mrs Biggins. ‘Art,’ she said when he appeared, ‘please be a dear and take Miss Elmfield around.’
‘It’s Miss Hutton,’ said Stella.
‘He doesn’t need to know, he won’t be interested and he won’t remember,’ Lydia said bitingly whilst smiling benevolently to Art, whose eyes shone like small beads of jet. He disappeared back into his home. ‘And you do not mention why you are here.’
Stella was taken aback.
‘You can be an historian, or a writer – something like that. But not an estate agent. Make it up.’ And she walked away, banging down her stick every stride as if expecting to find part of her land hollow.